Previously
Dolores Rochester pays an unexpected visit to Grand Duke Resurreccion at his suburban Lancaster estate and proposes marriage to break her engagement to Crown Prince Adrian. In return, she promises to help him reclaim his mother's conquered homeland, the Aleister Fief.
The Crown Princess was barren.
No matter how many different physicians were brought in secret, the verdict never changed.
And then came the night Adrian found out.
Crash!
A white porcelain vase, said to have come from the East, shattered ruthlessly against the floor.
Adrian burst into wild laughter, like a man out of his mind.
“Ha. Hahaha…!”
“A-Adrian. Your Highness—”
“Dolly… you dared deceive me about being barren and went through with marriage?”
“…!”
“How dare you trick me? You?”
A second vase smashed on the floor.
Shards flew and struck Dolores’s feet in her silk slippers.
Even when severely scolded by her father, or subjected to her brother’s rather rough pranks, Dolores had always endured it all like an ‘elegant lady.’
“Y-Your Highness. This is… there must… must be some mistake…!”
Yet that night, for the very first time, Dolores trembled from head to toe in pure panic.
She had always known her body was weak.
Her cycles were terribly irregular, a fact the family physician had worried over even before the wedding.
Still, she never imagined it would be confirmed like this after they wed.
Adrian gritted his teeth, seething with fury.
“The marquisate must have lost its mind. To trick me and pawn off… such defective goods, pristine only on the outside?”
“…!”
Like the porcelain vase, her mind shattered to pieces.
She had never imagined the man who had looked upon her with adoration since childhood could turn so cold.
Defective goods. Pristine only on the outside.
As Adrian moved to storm out, Dolores dropped frantically to her knees.
Porcelain shards as tiny as grains of sand dug into her knees.
Yet such petty pain was nothing compared to the overwhelming terror hammering at her heart.
“I didn’t deceive you! How could I ever—if we just hear from another physician—!”
“What? Summon more of them, only to add to the list of doctors we have to bribe into silence?”
Adrian narrowed his eyes in utter disbelief.
It was a look she had never received before.
Never in her life had the world, and especially men, looked at Dolores with such eyes.
They had always gazed upon her as if she were a masterpiece sculpted from roses…
And now?
“Shameless. Have you no shame as a woman?”
“Adrian…”
In an instant, she had been reduced to a creature smeared in filth.
Her skin pricked with shame, as though pierced by countless needles.
Watching her wretched state, Adrian finally let out a long sigh.
“Phew. Dolly. Very well, being barren is… beyond your control, and I am not a heartless man.”
“Your Highness…!”
“I would hardly cast out one as lovely as you.”
“Ah…”
“Having granted you the seat of Crown Princess, I cannot simply revoke it so easily.”
He said it to reassure her, but Dolores felt not the slightest ease.
‘One as lovely as me… What does that mean?’
If she was kept only because she was lovely, what would happen when the god of time carved wrinkles around her eyes?
What if age dimmed her sight, causing her to scowl, or she put on even a trace of flab…?
‘What will become of me then?’
The answer was already before her.
Dolores looked down at the floor with trembling eyes.
She would become like the white porcelain fragments strewn across the ground.
Every natural aspect of aging began to feel like a catastrophic disaster.
To become ugly was now nothing short of a death sentence.
‘No. I have to stop it!’
From that day forward, Dolores became obsessed with her appearance.
Her naturally translucent skin had to be even more flawless.
Even after applying powder mixed with the finest pearl dust, anxiety forced her to check the mirror again and again.
She could no longer eat in peace.
The desserts she used to sneak bite by bite tasted only of guilt.
If anything even slightly greasy entered her stomach, she purged it that very night.
Her waist was already so fragile it seemed ready to snap.
Yet the Dolores in the mirror continued to taunt her.
‘Do you think this is enough? Can’t you see the fat?’
‘The moment you lose your looks, you’re finished!’
“Ugh…!”
And then Dolores would heave up whatever she had eaten all over again.
Because of it, her life as Crown Princess was a living hell.
Had there been someone to lean on, might it have ended at purgatory?
Her family, however, was merciless.
“How could such a disgrace happen…!”
In the third year of their marriage.
When a child still failed to quicken, her father and brother badgered her relentlessly until they pried the secret loose.
‘Perhaps they might share this burden with me.’
Yet her father, Marquis Rochester, completely shattered that thread of hope.
“The only reason I married your mother was because her family was known to be fertile.”
“Father…”
“Haaah. What on earth are we to do? The Imperial Family invested in our house precisely because you are Crown Princess!”
Her brother, James, vented his own frustration.
“Father, what do we do now? The repayment for Gilbert is coming up! Hey, are you serving him properly in bed?”
“Brother!”
“Isn’t it because you’re doing something wrong?!”
Unable to bear it any longer, Dolores lashed out for the first time.
“Do you have any idea how much I’ve helped you since becoming Crown Princess?!”
Walking on eggshells around Adrian and driving herself mad over her beauty, she had still secretly funneled privy purse funds to her brother.
James had a severe gambling habit and loose conduct with women. She was the one who paid to buy those women’s silence.
She had been taught that her brother’s success was the family’s success.
‘Yet how dare he bring up what happens in bed?’
As if his sister were nothing more than a broodmare…!
At that moment, James shoved Dolores hard in the shoulder. There was not a shred of respect for the Crown Princess.
“Ugh!”
“What gives you the right to raise your voice? Ugh, if you weren’t my sister—”
“Enough, James!”
The marquis barked at his children.
His sharp green eyes gleamed with an unfathomable scheme.
“Haaah… For now, Your Highness the Crown Princess. We will take measures to ensure your position is preserved at all costs.”
“F-Father.”
“The seat of Empress will belong to Your Highness no matter what… but in exchange.”
The marquis’s gaze glinted coldly.
Though Dolores had inherited those very same green eyes, the way he looked at her was by no means the gaze of a father toward his flesh and blood.
Now, how best to move this flawed chess piece?
It was a greedy calculation, and nothing more.
“In exchange, you must follow your father’s counsel without question.”
Disobey, and she would be abandoned.
Marquis Rochester instilled that dread into Dolores with terrifying precision.
And his idea of ‘taking measures’ was truly beyond all imagination.
He slipped another woman from the family into her husband’s bed.
None other than Dolores’s closest cousin.
Dolores had been pure until her wedding day.
It took time for the innocent to recognize the filth of others.
Thus, it took her far too long to realize that the Crown Prince’s ‘pleasant hours’ were spent with noble ladies, or why a maid would sometimes leave his office flushed.
Once she realized it, she was consumed by uncontrollable rage and threw fit after fit.
She forced the wenches who dared sleep with the Crown Prince and flaunt his favor onto their knees and had them beaten.
Was that not natural?
They were boasting about sleeping with a married man.
“My word. To throw such fits with such a pretty face.”
“His Highness the Crown Prince endures her remarkably well.”
“Is it not simply because affection from childhood is so hard to shake?”
Yet why was Dolores the only one condemned?
At some point, Dolores was no longer the ‘Diamond of the Empire.’
Nor was she Dolly, the fair and delicate porcelain doll.
Around her twenty-fifth year, her moniker changed.
‘A wicked woman wearing the mask of a siren.’
Yet even that so-called wicked woman could never have imagined this.
“…Angelica.”
“Ah. Sister Dolores.”
One late afternoon, Dolores arrived at the Crown Prince’s new retreat.
She had intended to put an end to her husband’s latest mistress…
Her heart dropped to her stomach the moment she saw the woman rising gracefully from the bed, in a chamber decorated far more lavishly than the Crown Princess’s own quarters.
A slender, fragile figure like fine glassware, seemingly ready to shatter.
Soft platinum-blonde hair veiling a chest covered in marks.
And dark green eyes so characteristic of the Rochester line.
“How could you do this!”
It was Angelica, the cousin she had been closest to.
They had been so close that Dolores had paid for Angelica’s entire debutante wardrobe out of her own pocket.
It was a kindness meant to ensure the orphaned girl would not be looked down upon.
Yet Angelica showed not the slightest hint of shame.
“Sister, you’re here?”
She simply smiled softly, as if Dolores were merely late for tea.
“What is the meaning of this, Angelica! Did you think being family would spare you from—”
“Uncle… your father told me to do this.”
“…What?”
“He said my cousin was barren. He asked me to bear the child in your stead.”
Angelica let out an indifferent little laugh.
Only then did Dolores comprehend her father’s full scheme.
So long as his barren daughter occupied the seat of Empress, it did not matter which woman of the Rochester bloodline carried the imperial heir.
What a greedy old monster.
Angelica looked upon the paralyzed Dolores, then slipped casually out of bed.
“I am honored that His Highness the Crown Prince dotes on me so.”
“Ah…”
“Once I present him with a child, I ask for your proper acknowledgment. Your Highness Sister.”
The following year, the Emperor passed away.
Naturally, Adrian and Dolores became the new imperial couple.
And that same year, Angelica gave birth to a son.
A remarkably healthy, handsome boy with golden hair.
Without a word of consultation, Adrian registered the child as born of Dolores.
“Dolly. If you truly love me as my Empress, surely you can love my child as well?”
“Pardon…?”
“I intend to register this child as the imperial heir born from your womb.”
At that, Angelica bowed her head even lower.
She gave off a pitiful air of entirely yielding to her ‘husband’s’ righteous judgment.
Blindsided by the bolt from the blue, Dolores lost all composure.
“Your Majesty. How could you do this to me! I will never accept this, not even in death!”
“Dolores! How dare you defy the Emperor’s—”
“This child is a bastard! A bastard cannot ascend the throne!”
In his father’s arms, the baby slept so peacefully.
Though the child was undeniably beautiful, he was utterly repulsive to her.
“Sob, Sister…”
Yet nothing was more sickening than Angelica, who let a single tear roll down her cheek.
Angelica covered her face with both hands, her shoulders trembling. Adrian hurriedly wrapped an arm around her waist.
“S-Sister. I am so, so sorry. Truly… This is all my—”
“Angelica, do not weep. How could any of this be your fault?”
“Your Majesty…!”
Right before his lawful wife, Adrian pressed a tender kiss to Angelica’s forehead.
“Angelica, our son will be the Crown Prince.”
Those words were a curse laid upon Dolores’s life.
Dolores was reduced to a flawless ‘doll.’
A powerless ornament, existing merely to look the part.
Yet even a doll could not endure abuse forever.
Dolores did everything in her power to preserve her dignity.
‘It is not too late.’
Though her husband treated her with cold disdain, she studied politics frantically to understand the court.
Managing internal palace affairs was overwhelming enough, yet she kept her eyes peeled on the world outside.
Even so, in the year she turned forty, her life ended on the execution block.
Condemned on the charge of being ‘the mad Empress who attempted to harm her own son, the Crown Prince.’
Yet the ways of the world were truly strange.
Dolores’s head had undeniably been severed.
Yet when she opened her eyes, what was this?
“Young Lady. Are you well?”
“…”
“You haven’t seemed yourself lately… Shall we order new cosmetics?”
Why had Dolores Rochester returned to the age of twenty-two?
To a time before she had officially wed Adrian, back when she still resided in the Rochester townhouse.
Dolores marveled at the face reflected in the vanity mirror.
‘My goodness. The elasticity of my skin is truly incredible…’
No matter what precious creams she had slathered on, youth had been something she could never keep as the years passed.
Above all, she loved the light in her eyes.
A vibrant gaze from a time before her soul had been ground down and driven to desperation.
The woman in the mirror was young, and she held the chance to change her life.
‘I cannot let this miracle slip away.’
No matter what it took, she would leave this wretched family and flee that horrific marriage.
Then what should she do?
Whom should she meet first, and where should she begin?
Dolores turned to look at the fidgeting maids.
“…First.”
“Yes, Young Lady!”
“Bring me chocolate cake. The whole cake.”
“…Pardon?”